1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital communication systems and more particularly to a digital communication system that maintains an awareness of the behavior of each user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Over time, a variety of digital data communications links have been developed, and will continue to be developed. Each link typically uses a single protocol, with some set of messages and fields associated with that protocol. Users of these links typically determine how to make use of the messages and fields within the protocol being used. This results in users that are unable to communicate with each other due to differences in the protocols involved, the message sets involved, and/or the fields involved. In situations where cooperation between users is useful and necessary, they have no means of sharing digital information. Although efforts are underway to create common standards for digital communication between platforms, there is still the need to support digital communication between existing platforms using existing protocols.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,883,586, issued to Tran et al, discloses an embedded mission avionics data link system which allows an aircraft to receive, transmit, and process a variety of different types of information. The system has the capability of generating and receiving video information for viewing by a pilot in the cockpit. The system also requests, receives and recognizes situation awareness data as well as mission update data and processes this information accordingly. Any video images received by the pilot either externally or internally may be annotated and either stored in memory or transmitted externally. The system allows multiple aircraft on a mission to stay in constant communication as to relative positions to each other and targets, provide up-to-date information as to the situation that exists at the target, and do this in a mostly automatic fashion that reduces the workload of the pilot and enhances the mission capability.